Bowa Decides to Play Brown in Every Game : Padres Hope Result Will Be Permanent Spot at Third

Chris Brown has had his jaw broken, his wrist snapped, his courage questioned, his pride damaged, his swing changed and his head spun around.

The past year has been one injury or crisis after another for Brown. Finding an early-season cure has not been easy.

At first, the Padres tried rest, benching him twice in the first two weeks of the season.

“That didn’t work,” Manager Larry Bowa said.

That left Bowa with one other choice: Play Brown. He tried that Thursday afternoon.

The initial results were not encouraging. Brown went 0 for 4 and left 6 runners on base in a 2-0 victory over the Dodgers. But despite his struggles, Bowa said Brown will be at third base tonight when the Padres open a three-game series against the San Francisco Giants.

In fact, expect Brown to start all three games against the Giants, the same team against which his timid performance at the plate landed him on the bench in the first place.

Bowa has declared Brown to be his third baseman. That is for good, for bad, but maybe not for always. Because that is what this latest experiment is all about.

“We traded for Chris Brown (he was acquired last July by the Giants), and now we have to find out if that was a good deal for this organization,” Bowa said. “Chris Brown will be in the lineup, and he will show us what he can do--against right-handers and against left-handers. We have to get him playing the way he played two years ago.”

That was the Brown who batted .317 in 1986, not the ineffective Brown who showed up Thursday against the Dodgers batting .214.

It did not help that Brown had sat out the previous two games, that he was trying a new batting stroke, that Fernando Valenzuela was pitching and that the attitude of much of the crowd of 24,096 at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium toward Brown was as gloomy as the weather. After all, the local fans had waited since September to get in some verbal shots at Brown.

He gave them plenty of reasons to boo.

He closed out the second inning by grounding into a double play with runners on first and second. He ended the fourth with a ground out to the shortstop, leaving runners on first and third. He hit into an inning-ending fielder’s choice with the bases loaded in the sixth. And he finished his day by bouncing out to the pitcher in the eighth. That dropped his average to .167.

“I grounded out, but I hit the ball hard each time,” said Brown, who had struck out 8 times in his previous 13 at-bats. “If you don’t play every day, it is hard. You can’t go out every other or every third day and expect to do anything.”

Bowa is aware of the predicament.

“I know how hard it is to sit out three days and play,” Bowa said. “Your timing is off.”

That is why the latest prescription is to play Brown every day. The decision was made at the time that Brown was growing disenchanted with his part-time role.

“All I can say is I’m not a utility player,” Brown said. “I expect to go out there every day, whether I’m in a slump or not.

“Having a day off when you’re in a slump may be fine. But when you’re in a slump and the day off starts to become days off with an ‘s’ instead of day off, that makes it harder.

“You can’t do anything by sitting on the bench. I’ve never seen anybody get a base hit sitting on the bench.”

The banishment of Brown was so complete that Bowa said Brown was “not mentally ready to hit” when he considered using him as a pinch-hitter Wednesday night with runners in scoring position in the ninth inning of a 4-3 loss to the Dodgers. Instead, he used Dickie Thon and Mark Parent, a rookie catcher with nine seasons in the minor leagues.

Thon walked to load the bases and, after Benito Santiago hit a sacrifice fly, Parent was called out on strikes to end the game.

“The manager made the decision he thought was best. If he can live with it, I can, too,” Brown said. “But I figured no matter what kind of slump I was in, I would be the man to come out there (to hit).”

Now Bowa says he has placed the bat in Brown’s hands and it will stay there unless he proves he cannot be the Padres’ everyday third baseman.

“We have to find out what he can and cannot do,” Bowa said, “ and we can’t do that by giving him days off.”